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- Convenor:
-
Karen Brown
(Oxford University)
- Stream:
- Human, plant and animal health
- Location:
- G51
- Start time:
- 12 September, 2006 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
none
Long Abstract:
These papers look at the important subject of pastoral farming and livestock management in South Africa. Livestock have been an essential feature of the South African economy at both commercial and subsistence levels, and from the 1870s various South African governments sought to increase output by establishing veterinary departments, dedicated to work in both the field and the laboratory. The development of vaccines and immunological techniques in Europe from the 1880s spawned the establishment of bacteriological facilities in the Cape and Transvaal where veterinary scientists investigated infections and designed new vaccines to cope with South Africa’s own disease environment. By 1900 it had also became clear that ticks conveyed a number of serious infections to livestock, the most dangerous being East Coast fever in cattle. Technological research resulted in the development of arsenical dips to kill infective ticks and the introduction of state regulated dipping in many areas, which had a dramatic impact on animal management. Controlling contagious and infectious diseases also entailed government regulation of livestock movements and the periodic enforcement of quarantines. These disease control measures contributed to the gradual demise of transhumance, a strategy that African and settler farmers had long used to ensure livestock had all year access to water and grazing. Collectively the papers look at scientific research into a number of serious livestock diseases and reflect upon the impact of preventative measures on pastoral farming and rural development.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper long abstract:
My paper focuses on the relationship between animal diseases and transhumance in South Africa during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Livestock were of great economic and social importance both to settlers and Africans in the country over a long period. Environmental conditions underpinned many local systems of transhumance in which people moved seasonally with their livestock to water resources and natural pastures. The paper explores the variety of these movements, their linkages with an expanding pastoral frontier, and with increasing commodification of livestock production. It will explore the idea, perhaps counterintuitive, that transhumance actually increases with commodification. And it will also discuss the paradox that while many transhumant practices were pursued to avoid disease, increasingly transhumance became associated with the spread of disease. Veterinary surgeons argued against multiple movements of livestock. Such views, as well as specific disease control measures, contributed to the gradual curtailment of transhumance. This had significant social and environmental impacts and became intertwined with `modernity' in the countryside as well as new patterns of investment and livestock management.
Paper long abstract:
In the nineteenth century the Cape was one of the world's largest producers of wool and mohair, yet this economy was under threat from a number of hitherto unidentified diseases. Farmers long suspected that certain species of ticks might transmit infections, but it was only after 1898, when the American entomologist Charles Lounsbury began to investigate a number of mysterious diseases, that this link was scientifically confirmed. The arrival of the devastating cattle disease known as East Coast fever to South Africa in 1902 increased the urgency of finding ways of controlling tick borne diseases, many of which were not preventable through inoculation. Farmers and scientists collaborated in developing dipping solutions and procedures to kill infective ticks, which had a major impact on the management of a pastoral farm and through regulations, increased the powers of the state over the rural environment. The paper looks at these issues from a scientific perspective, and also explores ecological investigations that date back to the 1930s, which were aimed at understanding tick habitats and predicting potential outbreaks.
Paper long abstract:
The outbreak of lungsickness among cattle in the Cape in 1853-7 marked the arrival of the first major new animal disease in South Africa. It threatened the colonial transport network as well as African societies in which cattle fulfilled important socio-economic functions. The paper evaluates the main strategies adopted by the colonial state, individual settlers and the Xhosa chiefs for the management of lungsickness during the initial outbreak. These strategies anticipated some of the veterinary interventions implemented during later epizootics, but, in the different institutional setting of the 1850s, they took a less congruent shape and were carried out by different actors. The colonial state issued legislation for the containment of the disease but was unable to enforce it. In the absence of veterinary experts it was left to individual settlers to put a preventative inoculation technique that was in still its infancy into practice. The Xhosa, who had not yet lost all of their political autonomy, implemented rigid restrictions on the access of colonial cattle into their territories that have largely been overlooked by a historiography focussing on the role of lungsickness in the rise of the millennial ‘Xhosa cattle-killing movement.’